How to accept compliments and recognize small achievements – 05/17/2023 – Equilibrium

Patting yourself on the back after a major victory in life can make you feel self-conscious. You want to acknowledge that you’ve done a good job, but you don’t want to be overbearing. It’s a delicate balance between quietly rejoicing in a job well done and coming across as cocky.

Despite this clumsiness, receiving recognition for your work sends positive feelings to your brain and helps you accomplish more. Companies use praise to boost productivity and revenue, and experts say the psychological impact of maintaining a positive view of your accomplishments can reduce stress and encourage better habits.

Unfortunately, not all compliments are rewarded equally. Studies reveal that in the workplace, women, especially non-white women, often receive less recognition and are tasked with important but underappreciated projects. As a result, they are less recognized at the time of promotions.

But even if you don’t know how to take a compliment, or even if you haven’t been receiving external recognition, you can still benefit immensely psychologically from celebrating your accomplishments alone. This is said by Teresa Amabile, professor at Harvard Business School and co-author of “The Principle of Progress”.

“It doesn’t have to be breakthroughs or huge successes,” she says. “Even small victories can make people feel great.”

Here’s how to embrace the power of those small wins and learn to be comfortable with recognition, even if you’re the one congratulating yourself.

Why is it worth accepting a compliment

Research shows that meaningful praise can measurably increase your motivation and performance and enhance your brain’s ability to recall and repeat new skills.

However, as we all know –and as studies show–, humans tend to pay more attention to their flaws than to the praise they receive.

According to Kristin Neff, an associate professor in the Department of Educational Psychology at the University of Texas at Austin, this is because our ancestors “who worried always had a better chance of surviving, so our brains were designed to be on the lookout for problems.”

Our difficulty accepting a compliment is compounded by the internalized message that “it’s not good to look like we’re bragging,” says Melody Wilding, social worker, professor of human behavior at Hunter College and performance coach for clients in high-level positions. . This, she says, leads to the common tendency to downplay our accomplishments.

“Often our innate gifts and abilities seem so natural to us that we don’t realize their value,” he says. For this very reason, compliments can offer us important information.

According to Wilding, when people look for repeating elements in the feedback they receive, they may discover talents they possess that they would not otherwise be aware of.

This intentional adjustment of our view of ourselves helps us correct our negativity bias and can be a useful baseline to start from during a salary negotiation or career transition, points out Neff.

So compliments can be helpful. But how to deal with the embarrassment felt when receiving them?

Respond kindly but without stretching. For example, “Thanks, I’m glad you said that,” or “I appreciate you noticing, and thanks for letting me know.” No verbiage or underestimating your own worth.

If you’re still afraid of sounding cocky, or if you’re genuinely interested in getting more feedback, asking a clarifying question is a great way to show that you value the opinion of the person who gave you the compliment and that you know there’s always a way. improve further.

The power of self praise

Sometimes you won’t get your work recognized no matter how hard you try. All good. You don’t have to wait for someone else to notice to start patting yourself on the back and learning from your successes. You don’t even need to have achieved some important goal.

“Even in the absence of recognition, people often feel incredibly happy when they move forward in work that is meaningful to them,” says Amabile, who studies the impact of everyday events on people’s productivity and their inner life at work. She found that the events that most impact this inner life are small moments of progress, reinforced by the process of reflecting on them.

Amabile’s team even discovered that personal satisfaction has a greater impact than a compliment coming from outside, if the employee feels that the compliments they received are not related to the work they value or if they were just “empty words” coming from the superior .

So what does this mean for you? Keeping a daily list of your accomplishments can be one of the most powerful ways to improve your intrinsic motivation, productivity, creativity, and positive mood.

Celebrate small achievements

How you celebrate your wins is a matter of personal preference, but as with budgets and diets, the best method is one that you can stick to.

All it takes is jotting down tasks you complete throughout each day, or taking a few minutes at night to compose a reflection. Unlike the to-do list, which is aspirational and often ambitious, the focus here will be on what you’ve already accomplished, not the things that still remain to be done.

That’s because these “small victories”, even if they do little to help us reach our bigger goals, can still benefit our mood and motivation, giving us an important sense of progress, points out Amabile.

Recording our accomplishments can have an equally positive effect on our personal lives. When we are going through difficult times, we are often advised to imagine how we would speak kindly to a friend who is going through a similar situation. But, according to Neff, it’s easy to forget that the same rule applies to embracing praise as well. Depending on the person, tasks like eating a healthy meal, taking a shower, or talking to a friend might be included in the list as accomplishments.

“Since we usually have no trouble dwelling on our anxieties and doubts, it’s important that we be very specific and intentional in reminding ourselves of the positive,” says Sian Beilock, cognitive scientist and dean of Barnard College, Columbia University,

How to keep that credit

Making a list of the things you’re proud of and the significant compliments you’ve received does more than just give your brain a good feeling and increase your self-awareness.

Eighty-six percent of recruiters agree that it’s important for a candidate to be able to convey their accomplishments clearly. “But because our minds tend to discount the positive, we often don’t remember our accomplishments when it’s time to promote ourselves,” says Wilding. To avoid this “blank in the head,” she recommends that you use your daily reflections to form a “praise file” of concrete contributions you’ve already made.

Experts say it’s also worth taking a few minutes each week to share your accomplishments with a co-worker, friend, or family member. This can help you get comfortable with these conversations, so that when it’s time to share your accomplishments in a more serious situation — say, a job interview — you’ll know exactly how to bring them up. It also helps reinforce the positive feedback loop and gets you to actively think about your recent accomplishments and how they contribute to moving you closer to your bigger goals.

Translated by Clara Allain